As early as 1904 Russell created a model ostensibly based on the Snake ceremony of the Hopi Indians, even though he had not yet visited the Southwest. The source for his sculpture was an illustrated anthropological report published by the Field Columbian Museum in Chicago in June 1902. By the time Russell created The Snake Priest, he had visited the Southwest, but it is doubtful he ever witnessed the Snake ceremony firsthand. The ceremony was presented every other year over a period of twenty-four days. Russell’s bronze supposedly depicts Lomanakshu, Chief of the Mishognovi Snake Fraternity, from the village of Mishognovi on the second, or middle, mesa of the Hopi settlements in New Mexico. The features of the Indian in the bronze, as small as they are, do indeed resemble contemporary photographs of Lomanakshu as they appeared in the Field Columbian Museum report. In the sculpture, the priest squats on his haunches and thrusts at a coiled snake with a snake “whip,” an important accessory to the ceremony. The “whip” was a shaft of wood about nine inches in length, with two long eagle tail feathers attached by wrapping the shaft with buckskin thongs. In the bronze the priest, seeking to handle the snake, is inducing it to uncoil by touching it rapidly over its body with the snake whip. Once the snake has uncoiled, it will be safer to handle. The Snake Pries. was originally cast in 1916 at the Benjamin Zoppo Artistic Bronze Foundry in New York, for a price of $10 per cast. At least twelve of these were made and sold in several galleries for a retail price of $50 apiece. After the Zoppo foundry closed in 1921, the plaster model for The Snake Priest was placed in storage until December 1926, following Russell’s death, when it was sent to Roman Bronze Works where additional casts may have been made. In 1929 Nancy Russell obtained the plaster model and had some additional casts, including the one on display here, made by the California Art Bronze Foundry.